Today is Louis Daguerre’s birthday, and Google is helping to celebrate it by devoting their logo to him. Happy 224th, buddy!

Wait, are you really about to ask me who Louis Daguerre was? Hey, it’s OK, to be fair the guy has been dead for about 160 years… Even so, in this line of work I sort of expected more from you. Maybe you’ve heard the word Daguerreotype before? Even my browser spell-checker knows that word. That’s right, it’s a photographic process; that’s probably close enough for most tabletop trivia games.

Unfortunately, this blog is not interested in tidbits of trivia, so get ready for facts. Lots of facts. With historical context.

It is easy to say that we are “standing at the crossroads.” Occasionally it’s even true, but the expression sounds so important, it evokes such responsibility, that it’s hard for scientists, technologists, journalists, historians, economists, and futurists to hold back the urge, even if the decision to be made is minor, the outcome arbitrary.

So recognize that it is with a full understanding that I say to you, right now, we stand at the crossroads of creativity. We’ve stood here before, we will stand here again, but I can say categorically that we stand here now and it is an important and exciting time to be a photographer.

It’s a sad day for Olympus, the venerable maker of both artistic and scientific optics equipment based in Japan. Business news outlets are reporting that Olympus has allegedly covered up decades of financial losses through questionably large payments to advisers and other tricks that could only be described as “cooking the books.”

Bloomberg’s photographer Tomohiro Ohsumi captured the photo at right of Olympus president Shuichi Takayama bowing his head during a news conference. On the front page of the Olympus global site, Takayama writes:

I try not to gush too frequently over the changes and updates that I make to this blog. Especially when they don’t really impact you, my dear readers. Occasionally, though, there is a change that I feel I should explain so that you know what’s happening and what I’m up to. This is one of those times.

You’ve probably already noticed the sharing buttons at the bottom of every post. I am trying out the ShareThis platform so that you can quickly and easily send anything you see here to your social network(s) of choice, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ (which I adore).

Fashion. It is not the subject of this blog. Nevertheless, those of you out there who have not been living beneath a heavy boulder, sheltered from the comings and goings of the world around you, have very likely picked up on this silicone bracelet trend.

Perhaps calling it a “trend” at this stage is an embarrassing betrayal of my actual disinterest in fashion when you consider that the silicone (or “gel”) bracelet was popularized in 2004 by Lance Armstrong’s “LIVESTRONG” campaign, for which Nike produced tens of thousands of the yellow wristbands. Still, I keep seeing new ones turn up so let’s just pretend it’s still trending.